Connecting the Dots
Introduction to our newsletter
It’s incredible how we attempt to act in the world before we even know ourselves. Did you know the world is a reflection of you? Everything you see on the outside is a reflection of who you are on the inside.
You are the dot that CONNECTS ALL DOTS.
In the last seventy years, there has been a revolution in experimental psychology in understanding perception theory. I had never heard of it, so I learned the hard way, by trial and error I recognized that what I saw was a projection of my aiming, my values, my beliefs, and who I told myself I was. Crisis after existential crisis I died and was resurrected, making myself immune to my own stupidity. In Spanish there is a saying “the tongue is the punishment of the body” [la lengua es el castigo del cuerpo], so I should tread carefully. My last crisis was a little over a year ago, I got divorced after a fifteen-year marriage and with two magnificent girls… again a battle lost because of my stupidity. I know one thing for sure, no matter how many times we die, we would never uncover all there is to us. But it’s worth trying our very best at it. I uncovered a great deal of gold in the process of each defeat, and if one is humble enough and open to being vulnerable, one can grow in every respect.
I am writing article to share some of my gold, mined in the last 40 years; gold I share with others to invest in their lives. I once heard that “a genius is the one that is capable of learning from the experience of others.” That is also what we call intelligence, the capacity to extrapolate from past experiences to apply learned knowledge to resolve present situations.
Image form Creativefabrica
Do not get me wrong, I am writing to clarify my ideas, to deepen my understanding, to broaden my vision, and to strengthen my determination to act and be bold. Today we need a clear mind, a vision, and an unbroken determination to act boldly. By no means am I trying to tell you what to do, that is your next DOT. Wouldn’t it be interesting if we shared dots and built something together?
WHY CONNECTING THE DOTS
When I was fourteen-years old I had my first existential crisis and I tried to kill myself. The reasons now are not relevant, what is relevant is that at twenty-years of age I went to psychotherapy and the subject came to the surface to haunt me. Even though it wasn’t my first time in therapy, it was the first one where I was all in and I stripped myself down to my bare bones. Week after week, I was connecting events, feelings, the specters of the people I called family, and merging them with the pain, the anger, the sorrow, and the shame of what I then called life. After it all washed up on the shore of who I was, a strong determination to be honest with myself emerged. I was hooked. I wanted to find out everything that had made me into who I was. A powerful character-trait emerged from that period, if I found something out of place, some dirt hidden under the rug, out of sight, I had to uncover it. At the minutest hint of an out-of-place feeling, or uncomfortable experience, I pulled the rug the hell off and began cleaning everything as thoroughly as I could.
I had a girlfriend back then who I adored. I inspired her to also go to therapy, which she did. After a few months, we were having a fight and I was attempting to uncover what was behind the whole thing, and she said with exasperation – you always want to explore the reasons why. You want to uncover what is behind things. We are not all like you. I don’t want to find out more, I am happy not knowing why. – I tried without success to make her realize the importance of it all, to no avail. You see, I learned that the one that cleans, gets dirty; and not everyone feels ok with getting dirty, even when cleaning.
When I was twenty and started therapy, I was overwhelmed by the reality of my life. It didn’t help me overcome that sense of drained beingness, until I started to connect the dots of my past and realized I was, in many ways, the result of my history, and who I told myself I was because of them. The dots in the past tell you a lot about you today; but there are also dots that open possibilities and may tell you who you are to become in the future. So, we can change a lot about ourselves by being exposed to dots that point forward and up, these also reveal where you really are and where you can aspire to be. The urge to reach that ascending dot and make it yours, the energy you invest in integrating that dot into your life, clears the path to act… then you are able to let go of dead weight with relief.
In the very end, if you attempt to go forward without integrating the part of you which is hidden from your conscience, it will not give you the inner peace you need to widen the “narrow clinks” in your cavern.
Coming next Wednesday
The Mother of all conspiracies
[1] Spanish: la lengua es el castigo del cuerpo.